Crossword clues for seamount
Douglas Harper's Etymology Dictionary
Wiktionary
n. A mountain that rises from the floor of the ocean and does not breach the water's surface.
WordNet
n. an underwater mountain rising above the ocean floor
Wikipedia
A seamount is a mountain rising from the ocean seafloor that does not reach to the water's surface ( sea level), and thus is not an island. Seamounts are typically formed from extinct volcanoes that rise abruptly and are usually found rising from the seafloor to in height. They are defined by oceanographers as independent features that rise to at least above the seafloor, characteristically of conical form. The peaks are often found hundreds to thousands of meters below the surface, and are therefore considered to be within the deep sea. During their evolution over geologic time, the largest seamounts may reach the sea surface where wave action erodes the summit to form a flat surface. After they have subsided and sunk below the sea surface such flat-top seamounts are called " guyots" or "tablemounts"
A total of 9,951 seamounts and 283 guyots, covering a total of have been mapped but only a few have been studied in detail by scientists. Seamounts and guyots are most abundant in the North Pacific Ocean, and follow a distinctive evolutionary pattern of eruption, build-up, subsidence and erosion. In recent years, several active seamounts have been observed, for example Loihi in the Hawaiian Islands.
Because of their abundance, seamounts are one of the most common oceanic ecosystems in the world. Interactions between seamounts and underwater currents, as well as their elevated position in the water, attract plankton, corals, fish, and marine mammals alike. Their aggregational effect has been noted by the commercial fishing industry, and many seamounts support extensive fisheries. There are ongoing concerns on the negative impact of fishing on seamount ecosystems, and well-documented cases of stock decline, for example with the orange roughy (Hoplostethus atlanticus). 95% of ecological damage is done by bottom trawling, which scrapes whole ecosystems off seamounts.
Because of their large numbers, many seamounts remain to be properly studied, and even mapped. Bathymetry and satellite altimetry are two technologies working to close the gap. There have been instances where naval vessels have collided with uncharted seamounts; for example, Muirfield Seamount is named after the ship that struck it in 1973. However, the greatest danger from seamounts are flank collapses; as they get older, extrusions seeping in the seamounts put pressure on their sides, causing landslides that have the potential to generate massive tsunamis.
Usage examples of "seamount".
Perry knew that he had gambled the future of Benthic Marine on the current project: drilling into a magma chamber within a seamount west of the Azores.
They could be seen in photographs beginning at about the turn of the century, villagers watching the photographer at work, often posed in native gear before silvery blurred vistas, black tips of seamounts emerging from gray sea fringed in brute-innocent white breakings, basalt cliffs like castle ruins, the massed and breathing redwoods, alive forever, while the light in these pictures could be seen even today in the light of Vineland, the rainy indifference with which it fell on surfaces, the call to attend to territories of the spirit.
It was scored everywhere with canyons, trenches, and crevasses and dotted with volcanic seamounts that he called guyots after an earlier Princeton geologist named Arnold Guyot.
But in answer to your question, most seamounts are of volcanic origin.
It had its trade route, but it had autonomous authority to choose its own course between ports, steering around storms and seamounts and even following whales as it wished.
Yet, on contemplation, Maia realized she knew next to nothing about the chain of seamounts, whose massive roots of columnar crystal erupted from the ocean crust far below, rising to pierce surface waves and bite off hearty portions of sky.
Maria had watched Mitch work hours and days perfecting computer models of his findings, 3-D rotatable graphics of the sub-oceanic landscape, with animated demonstrations of the seismic and geological stages in that landscape's evolution: the fractures, trenches, plains, seamounts and guyots.
Diana Gaa An old tramp steamer that Gunn remembers Pitt using to locate the mysterious seamount in pacific Vortex.